Guild Wars 2

What do you guys think of an evade build that functions similar to S/D but with dagger mainhand instead?

I was messing around with a 0/30/10/30/0 build the other day, and I thought maybe there was potential there.

Pro’s = Backstab burst, heartseeker as gap closer, more access to stealth.

Con’s = Lose condition removal and teleport from sword 2, lose boon steal(even 1 is still useful), lose a little evade efficiency(flanking/LS is better for evading than blossom).

I’m sure there are other trade-offs, but just the burst seemed like it would be worth a try.

d/d conditions.

Zacchary.6183:

d/d conditions.

This build is power/crit. Its a backstab build that uses more evades and less stealth.

which are your evades? only DB which does low dmg and consume your initiative points.
maye go for perma dodger with perma vigor, Signet of Agility, Roll for Initiative, Withdraw

Running a DD evade spam build while speccing for power is beyond dumb.

If its meant for direct damage then using death blossom would be a slight waste of initiative because DB is weak damage-wise. You’de have to make up for it for evade utilities.

Errant Venture.9371:

Running a DD evade spam build while speccing for power is beyond dumb.

Sometimes experiments fail. Sometimes they yeild impressive results. Never hurts to be creative.

But thank you for being useless!

Stx.4857:

Errant Venture.9371:

Running a DD evade spam build while speccing for power is beyond dumb.

Sometimes experiments fail. Sometimes they yeild impressive results. Never hurts to be creative.

But thank you for being useless!

Useless? Lol just think for a minute and you don’t need to experiment. You’re burning initiative on a low-damage attack in order to spam evades…but then you won’t have initiative available to burst with. I’m halfway through a Ph.D. in physics, and if one thing’s for sure, you don’t waste time and resources doing a physical experiment when a thought experiment will yield the same results.

D/D is obviously designed as a condi skill, and anyone with an IQ above 20 can see that spamming it doesn’t make any sense for a power build.

messiah.1908:

which are your evades? only DB which does low dmg and consume your initiative points.
maye go for perma dodger with perma vigor, Signet of Agility, Roll for Initiative, Withdraw

Yes, thats one of the things that doesn’t work so well is using death blossom in place of flanking strike. But the damage of death blossom isn’t really the point, you just use it for an extra dodge.

This build would use withdraw, quick pockets, sigil of energy, quick recovery.. and have near perma vigor.

I realize you cant evade as much with death blossom as you can with flanking, and the damage is worse, but the point of the build is to obtain the burst from backstab as a trade-off. Heartseeker is a good gap closer too, and the added damage from HS helps make up for the loss of damage on flanking/LS.

Errant Venture.9371:

Stx.4857:

Errant Venture.9371:

Running a DD evade spam build while speccing for power is beyond dumb.

Sometimes experiments fail. Sometimes they yeild impressive results. Never hurts to be creative.

But thank you for being useless!

Useless? Lol just think for a minute and you don’t need to experiment. You’re burning initiative on a low-damage attack in order to spam evades…but then you won’t have initiative available to burst with. I’m halfway through a Ph.D. in physics, and if one thing’s for sure, you don’t waste time and resources doing a physical experiment when a thought experiment will yield the same results.

D/D is obviously designed as a condi skill, and anyone with an IQ above 20 can see that spamming it doesn’t make any sense for a power build.

Assuming it would be spammed instead of being used situationally is your first mistake. This build has tons of initiative regen, so its less of an issue than you’re making it out to be.

Stx.4857:

Errant Venture.9371:

Stx.4857:

Errant Venture.9371:

Running a DD evade spam build while speccing for power is beyond dumb.

Sometimes experiments fail. Sometimes they yeild impressive results. Never hurts to be creative.

But thank you for being useless!

Useless? Lol just think for a minute and you don’t need to experiment. You’re burning initiative on a low-damage attack in order to spam evades…but then you won’t have initiative available to burst with. I’m halfway through a Ph.D. in physics, and if one thing’s for sure, you don’t waste time and resources doing a physical experiment when a thought experiment will yield the same results.

D/D is obviously designed as a condi skill, and anyone with an IQ above 20 can see that spamming it doesn’t make any sense for a power build.

Assuming it would be spammed instead of being used situationally is your first mistake. This build has tons of initiative regen, so its less of an issue than you’re making it out to be.

I’ve already tried it and I can tell you that using d/d for evades isn’t a good idea unless you plan on taking advantage of the bleeds. You can hybrid to deal damage as well as deal condition damage and still use dealth blossom as an Evade and Counter.

I do, however, believe that errant could have responded a little better.

Stx.4857:

Errant Venture.9371:

Stx.4857:

Errant Venture.9371:

Running a DD evade spam build while speccing for power is beyond dumb.

Sometimes experiments fail. Sometimes they yeild impressive results. Never hurts to be creative.

But thank you for being useless!

Useless? Lol just think for a minute and you don’t need to experiment. You’re burning initiative on a low-damage attack in order to spam evades…but then you won’t have initiative available to burst with. I’m halfway through a Ph.D. in physics, and if one thing’s for sure, you don’t waste time and resources doing a physical experiment when a thought experiment will yield the same results.

D/D is obviously designed as a condi skill, and anyone with an IQ above 20 can see that spamming it doesn’t make any sense for a power build.

Assuming it would be spammed instead of being used situationally is your first mistake. This build has tons of initiative regen, so its less of an issue than you’re making it out to be.

Why would you be using it situationally when thief has access to massive vigor + traited endurance restore? If you’re only dodging situtionally and not looking for perma-evade then using D/D is stupid. D/P will have far greater utility + damage (shadow shot, head shot, and bp are AMAZING, far more useful than kittenty D/D evade).

Zacchary.6183:

Stx.4857:

Errant Venture.9371:

Stx.4857:

Errant Venture.9371:

Running a DD evade spam build while speccing for power is beyond dumb.

Sometimes experiments fail. Sometimes they yeild impressive results. Never hurts to be creative.

But thank you for being useless!

Useless? Lol just think for a minute and you don’t need to experiment. You’re burning initiative on a low-damage attack in order to spam evades…but then you won’t have initiative available to burst with. I’m halfway through a Ph.D. in physics, and if one thing’s for sure, you don’t waste time and resources doing a physical experiment when a thought experiment will yield the same results.

D/D is obviously designed as a condi skill, and anyone with an IQ above 20 can see that spamming it doesn’t make any sense for a power build.

Assuming it would be spammed instead of being used situationally is your first mistake. This build has tons of initiative regen, so its less of an issue than you’re making it out to be.

I’ve already tried it and I can tell you that using d/d for evades isn’t a good idea unless you plan on taking advantage of the bleeds. You can hybrid to deal damage as well as deal condition damage and still use dealth blossom as an Evade and Counter.

I do, however, believe that errant could have responded a little better.

Some people are just kittens, no biggie.

My goal was to try and make an evasive backstab build. If it can’t be done so be it, but I just started with this. I completely understand that death blossom is initiative inefficient to be used for basically just the evade and minor damage, but like I said this build has tons of initiative.

In the end it might just be a waste considering you need to cloak and dagger to backstab anyway, so shadow arts would be better anyway but.. yeah.

This won’t work. DB cost way too many initiative to be considered a good dodging mechanism.

I’ll give you another reason why it won’t work: any melee-range evade build thief has is not very effective vs. many/most professions and builds BECAUSE telegraphing is nearly non-existent for many melee skills and thief can’t handle the damage it receives between evades. In order for evade to work as thief, you HAVE to either be fighting fairly bad players, a few specific builds/professions, and/or have sb to do most of your fighting with.

And there are many builds thief melee-range evade builds just can’t beat.

But right now there are many things thief can’t beat at all, even if the thief has superior skill to the opponent. THANKS ANET!

Sadly i have to agree , the dodger build isn’t that effective anymore. Still fun to mess around with in hotjoin tho.

Condi meta was a hard counter against the build but still doable.
But now that it changed to condi/stun meta its almost undoable.

The warriors kinda stool this builds fire. Hammer/mace ruined all the fun for any other closecombat character.